We believe in full employment and work for all those who want it, but those who cannot work should get decent benefits that lift them out of poverty, and a safety net that protects those experiencing difficult times.
Today is the opening day of the TUC’s two day Disabled Worker’s Conference. And last week was the Mental Health Awareness Week, with the theme of Surviving or Thriving? While the employment rate of disabled people has increased in the last few years there is still a large disability employment gap between disabled and non-disabled…
I work for the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, a group of tax and welfare rights specialists with expertise in the tax and related welfare issues of the low-paid. Often, people contact us describing their problems with tax, National Insurance, tax credits and interactions with other means-tested benefits. A good number of the problems have…
Findings of the McGregor-Smith review aim to report on the barriers BME people face when in work. This report is seen as an opportunity for the government to finally take action and tackle the discrimination BME people face at work. Over the years we have consistently stressed the need for a separate clear race equality strategy…
Official statistics show that you’re more likely to be a victim of violent crime or domestic abuse if you are a woman and if you live in a poorer part of the country. A woman living in one of the most deprived parts of the country is nearly four times as likely as a man…
At single parents’ charity Gingerbread, we’re campaigning to ensure the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is fit for purpose for the UK’s two million single parent families. Launched in September 2016, our campaign Maintenance Matters calls for a fairer charging system and zero-tolerance on non-payment of child maintenance. Today, there are 3.1 million children from single…
The Chancellor’s announcement of a small cut in the Universal Credit taper rate goes nowhere near making up for the cuts his predecessor announced in July 2015, which will leave many low-paid working families hundreds – even thousands – of pounds worse off a year. As the End Child Poverty (*) coalition put it, today’s…
This afternoon in the #AutumnStatement Philip Hammond announced a number of measures that go some way to addressing the crisis we are facing in both the private and rented housing sectors. These include: A Housing Infrastructure Fund of £2.3bn by 2020-2021, funded by the NPIF (National Productivity Investment Fund) and allocated to local government to…
Today the End Child Poverty coalition published their annual Child Poverty Map of the UK which local authorities and parliamentary constituencies across the UK and shows the proportion of children living in poverty in each. (Full disclosure: the TUC is a proud member of End Child Poverty) It always comes as something of a shock…
Today, the government took another step to increase the number of children in poverty. They have done this by cutting the Benefit Cap, first introduced by the Coalition government. Outside London, the number of people in need whose benefits are cut is likely to go up by more than 700% and even in London the increase…
For the first time, an authoritative statutory body has recognised that the cuts to Universal Credit announced in last summer’s Budget will mean that it is much less generous than was originally planned, making it effectively a cut when compared with Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit which it replaces. Back in 2010, when…